


A Lesson Learned

by Pyrosnowman



Series: Snowfall [2]
Category: Destiny (Video Games)
Genre: The Hive - Freeform, sword logic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-13
Updated: 2018-01-13
Packaged: 2019-03-04 09:24:15
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,544
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13361589
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyrosnowman/pseuds/Pyrosnowman
Summary: How Snow came to learn the Sword Logic





	A Lesson Learned

“We’re here.” The words are pointless, really, kind of stupid if you get down to it. Of course they are _here_ , of course they _arrived_ , of course they followed the clues and the signals and ended up on a Luna that is no longer theirs, but to Snow maybe it never was his in the first place. He is Awoken, grey skin and orange eyes and hair that is silk. Inside he is Light and freshly rezzed, barely a year back, but the pride of every Hunter hangs off his back as naturally as it does on any veteran.

His partner is human, and she is everything a Titan should be. She is strong, unwavering, confident, but she is unceasingly wise in ways that few Titans (especially as fresh as her) are. Snow is the leader of their little fireteam of two, Snow is the leader because he’s been at this longer and he’s been to the moon, and more to the point, he is a Hunter and this is a _hunt_. He’s also new enough to attempt this little venture of theirs without double checking with Cayde while being experienced enough to think he can handle it. Alex, the Titan, she knows all too well that this can end poorly. Her Ghost doesn’t like it, but he’s as curious as she is. Snow’s Ghost is quietly smug, somewhat aloof, but doting on her Hunter. Alex’s Ghost thinks he’s nothing impressive, but he keeps that to himself.

“Snow, look.” The Hunter turns from examining the fallen guardian half buried in the lunar sand, and on the ridge above them is an exo, silent, but clearly waiting for _something_.

Alex can hear the suspicion in his voice, underlined with a challenge ( _always eager to unsheathe the knife,_ she thinks). “Who…?” but the question never gets finished.

The massive door in front of them parts slowly, unexpectedly, and both of them are stumbling back as the screech of angry thrall pours out of the darkness. Neither Guardian hesitates to draw their respective weapon (Alex is low and precise, her pulse rifle already blazing. Snow is landing precise shots with his hand canon and spinning his knife in the other hand) and begin to thin the massive surge of Hive in front of them. Thralls give way to acolytes, who give way to massive lumbering knights. A wizard appears, but she hangs back and directs the mob with screeches that grind into Alex’s ears in horrible ways that will haunt her dreams.

There is a louder scream, deeper and reverberating and a giant lumbering _thing_ is clawing through the door and blasting energy at her flimsy cover.

“ _OGRE!”_ Snow is screaming, hurling a grenade at the beast. “ _THEY BROUGHT A FUCKING OGRE!”_ His indignation makes Alex laugh, but it’s laced with hysteria that just makes her shots more accurate. Adrenaline is pumping through her blood and her Ghost, panicked but always helpful, is telling her to watch her six when she doesn’t pay close enough attention to her proximity sensors.

Out of the corner of her eye Alex watches Snow stand on top of a rock and nail shot after shot into the few remaining acolytes and the hulking ogre, and she thinks that he is beautiful in the way that only unmitigated destructive power can be. Arc energy crackles around him and suddenly he is Dancing and his blade sings through everything near him. Acolytes, Knights, thrall, none of them matter because his song his death and he Dances to the beat in a synchrony that only Bladedancer Hunters know.

He sinks his Arc Blade deep into the ogre’s eye, and this time its scream is shrill and full of pain, but it silences like all the rest. The body collapses and Snow stumbles off of it, exhausted and shaking out the last bits of Arc. Alex slowly stands, daring to smile and laugh. Snow is too, and they’re both a little hysterical and shaky but they can’t deny that this song and dance of killing and almost dying is _fun_ and Alex is struck with the overwhelming urge to dance.

He’s about to say something, something witty and stupid and full of puns because he’s a _Hunter_ and in the month that Alex has been alive, she knows that Snow and the rest of his caped brethren live and breathe these stupid little jokes but he never makes it because that awful screech is _back_ and they’re turning but it’s too slow. The wizard picks up Snow by his throat, who responds by jamming his handcannon under her chin and pulling the trigger till it clicks empty, but her shields only waver and the oppressing feeling of power and darkness makes Alex’s heart flutter in a newfound fear.

The Wizard hurls Snow through the doorway to the Temple of Crota with a strength that should be impossible for her frail body, but his body hits the ground too hard and he crumples and lays still. Rage and fear fill Alex and there is Arc in her fist and Ghosts’s screams of _Turn back and run!_ are just extra noise. The Fist of Havoc connects but Alex is new, her Light is strong but not strong enough and the Wizard only laughs as she summons more thrall. The Titan has no choice, between the clawing scrabbling rage of a thousand thrall or the retreating form of the wizard and the now closed doors, Alex can only flee. She can only hope that Snow’s Ghost will keep him alive long enough for Alex to drag him back to the Tower.

***

_“Snow!”_ The voice is garbled, like he’s hearing it through three feet of water and a solid seat of earmuffs. _“Snow!”_ Traveler, his body hurts everywhere and he can feel the freshly repaired bones scream in protest as he shifts. Everything is pain and the voice won’t stop screaming his name, it’s familiar though. It’s almost—

“Ghost!” Snow sits up suddenly and instantly regrets that decision as his entire body begins to kindly report just how much the act of living and moving hurts.

“ _Oh_ you’re awake thank the Traveler your Light was so _weak_ and I wasn’t sure if—” Ghost’s words fade into the buzz that’s at the back of Snow’s head as he takes in his surroundings, his small companion buzzing around him and repairing his armor and wounds as quickly as she can. A pang of compassion surges through him, she followed him down here to this… pit. The memory of what happened comes back to him slowly, and Snow realizes that he his deep in Hive territory, and worse, he is chained to a wall with some kind of metal that feels like it’s sapping his very Light out.

A screech that is now all too familiar rings through the caverns, and the strange oozing Hivespawn on the walls and floor almost seem to react in _excitement_ to the Wizard behind that screech. He tries not to retch at the thought that he is sitting on what is most likely Hivespawn.

“ _Hide_ Ghost! If she catches you, you’ll die, then we both die!” Snow hisses, crushing the feeling of fear and panic under the cold hard logic that escape isn’t an option yet and that his Ghost needs life more than he does.

She’s clearly unhappy about it, her tines are spinning in the way that tells him she wants to argue, but she knows he is right. She fizzes into the pocket space she inhabits, out of reach from the Hive but still present in the back of his mind. The fact that she is not gone is a comfort he shares with her, his emotions linked to hers so very intimately. She refuses to let him ride out whatever is next alone, and for this he is grateful.

His captor glides in with an easy sort of grace that reminds him of the Warlock order, but she is no Guardian of the Light.

The Wizard is all limbs and cloak, and her claws are caked in blood and gore that he hopes doesn’t belong to Alex. She hisses at him, and begins to speak in a garbled language that makes his spine tingle. _Magic_. There is a shift, a click in reality and suddenly there are _words_.

_Most of you die before I can make my examinations. The others die as I’m approaching. You are the first in a very long time who has the audacity to live, Light-Maker._

The voice is in his head but it’s real, it scrapes along his scalp with all the gentleness of a rusty and chipped dagger, but Snow forces himself not to be afraid. He is _never_ afraid. He can’t be.

“I’ll be sure to repay you for all the dead you’ve accrued then. Hunters always collect their debts.”

_Your bravado and bravery is false, Light Slave. Your God is dead and mine will feast on its corpse. I wonder if you’ll live long enough to watch._ She drags a claw down his mask, then with a vicious yank she tears the helm from his head and crushes it beneath her hands. Without the respirator, Snow is choking on the air down here, it’s filled with poison and Hive magic (perhaps they are one and the same) but the gift of Light means that he will never want for breath. _You shall make a fine subject, Hunter of the Dark. It is unfortunate, for you, that your prey is mightier than you. A lesson that you will never get to teach._

“Try me,” he snarls, straining against his chains. “I’ve gunned down countless of you boney fucks, watch me pry out your eyes and use them as decoration for my helmet.”

The wizard pauses, and for a second Snow thinks he might have cowed her. A thought that is idiocy incarnate, because she begins to laugh. _I think, perhaps, you need a different lesson._ Before he can retort, the wizard shoves her claws _into_ him, wrapping her long fingers around one of his ribs. She is saying something, telling him some horrible joke that she laughs at but he can’t hear her over a pain he has never before felt. She _pulls_ and there’s a horrible snap of bone, and she is wagging his rib in front of his eyes. It is covered in blood and he can see the marrow drip from the end. Snow’s world is going dark, but he hears the last words with perfect clarity.

_I know your little Dead Light is here with you. I will let her heal you, bring you back from the clutches of your final Sleep, and then I shall teach you the most powerful of Logic._

***

The Ghost was forced out of the pocket space the second Snow died. The Wizard stared down at her, unmoving a silent. Something close to a grin crossed her face, and she left the cave, message clear— _you are trapped, and you live because I say so_.

Resurrection is a tricky in places like this. Light exists in all things, but in places of oppressive darkness, Light flees the body so much quicker. Ghost was grateful that her guardian was as proficient with Arc Light as he was. Arc Light, more so than any other form, was connected with life. Arc was in _everything_ that lives, and that made the process easier by far. If he was a Gunslinger, or worse, a Nightstalker, the process might not work in time at all. It was one of the reasons Bladedancers were such effective assassins, though their speed and invisibility certainly helped.

Snow came sputtering back to life, coughing up blood and panting heavily as his rib was restored. Ghost spun around his head, checking for any more injuries she missed and making as many repairs to his armor as she could.

“We need an escape plan,” his Ghost muttered as she fussed. “I refuse to watch you sit through that again.”

Snow lifted a manacled hand weakly. “Hadium cuffs. Infused with whatever the fuck makes Light weak. Hive magic, darkness, and something slimy probably.”

Ghost whirled on him, and he swore she could glare. “Take this seriously, Snow. When you die, I can’t hide. It’s only a matter of time before you don’t get to come back.”

Her Hunter nodded. “I know. But the thing is, we both know how Hadium works. Can’t break it till you have something strong enough to overpower whatever is infused inside. Only thing we’ve got is the Light, my guns won’t put dents in these, and they’ll just be confiscated. Kind of need those to get the hell outta here.”

“But your Light _isn’t_ strong enough, and the only way to do…. That….” Ghost trailed off, quickly realizing what he was implicating.

Snow smiled grimly. “Gotta keep dying. Thanatonauts do it all the time, right? Die, understand the nature of life and death, come back stronger. Ikora did it, and look at her.”

“It’s forbidden for a reason,” she insists.

“You got a better option?” he shot back. “We’re too deep for radio to work properly, and the second the Wizard kills me and you don’t pop out, they’ll hunt you, they’ll find you, they’ll tear your Light out, and then they’ll kill you in a very painful way. I can handle dying over and over again to this, but don’t you dare make me go knowing you’re doomed too.”

Moments like these were rare. Snow was happy to walk into a fight cocky and full of swagger, but very rarely did he let people know how much he cared about them. It was his defense mechanism, and Ghost never bothered to argue with it; she had seen far worse in her time. So she listened to her partner, she slipped back into pocket space, but she let his consciousness connect with his. It wouldn’t lessen the pain, but she wasn’t going to let him suffer alone.

***

_Are you ready to learn, Light-Maker?_

“Shall I take notes?” he asked sarcastically. The retort earned him a slow claw down his face, deep enough to catch on bone. Snow forced himself not to show any signs that it hurt, grateful for the incredibly high pain tolerance that came with being a Guardian.

_Your spirit is strong. Surprisingly so. I shall teach you, Light-Maker_. The Wizard drifted closer, her face so close that Snow could almost taste her rotting breath. _And in the process, I shall break you and remake you. How glorious your new Shape shall be!_

And so it began. Snow didn’t have much of an indication of time to begin with, but with the endless torture things began to blend together. It was never quick. The Wizard knew exactly how far to push him till he died, and then she would use darkness and magic to keep him kicking just that much longer. She would force him to watch as she slowly moved up his legs, removing each bone with painstaking precision. When he finally began to scream, she tore his jaw off and kept the bleeding down with arc burns and darkness that seeped into his skin and burned him in ways that transcended the physical. His Ghost, even in her pocket space, could feel the Darkness burn its way through him and soon it wasn’t just _his_ screams he was listening to. The first time she took his jaw, the Wizard forgot to stem the blood properly, and he choked to death almost mercifully. She didn’t grant him such easy outs after that.

The Wizard kept her promise to teach him this Logic she crooned about. Her voice echoed through his mind and across his mental connection to his Ghost, even when he was in so much pain that his entire world was pinpricks of the deepest agony he had ever known.

_The Sword Logic is our entire existence_ she would whisper to him, almost lovingly digging a claw under his armor and deep into his skin. She _tugged_ underneath his sternum and Snow gagged at the feeling of being pried apart. _We live and we die by it. It is our philosophy, it is our Power. Do you understand, Light-Maker? It is as tangible as your Light, and it feeds us._

She recited to him the Books of Sorrow one day, revealing him the entirety of the origin of the Hive and their strength. His existence was pain and the Hive, and for a time he began to forget just who he was. His only respite was death, and in those moments Snow would force himself to do what Ikora Rey and so many of the thanatonauts had done: walk death and become its equal.

Snow came so close to failing so much that it was hard not to just give up entirely and just let the Wizard destroy him. She would become bored eventually, and just crush his Ghost and then him. It would be easy to let that happen, wouldn’t it? But Snow pulled himself from such thoughts through gentle reminders from his Ghost. It wasn’t just his life on the line, and he would not disappoint the one being of Light down here in this hell with him.

It was slow, but he began to truly Learn over those many months. He saw death and its endless cold expanse, he saw Light, he saw pain, and he saw Logic. Distantly, he was aware that some other creature was watching, something far stronger than the Wizard who never failed to remind him of his pain. Something far Darker.

_To kill is to become strong. Strength is the only path to survival, but to survive is simply not enough. Power is life, to live is to be powerful. To face battle is to test your power, your right to live. It is a reciprocal that cannot end, for it is the truth of the Universe, and any Truth of that nature is as eternal and infinite as the Deep._

Without realizing it, Snow came to cling to this truth. To face violence with your own violence was to prove your right to life. The Wizard wasn’t just telling him the Sword Logic, she was _enacting_ it upon him. A lesson through doing. He forced himself to survive longer each time she came to visit him, to embrace this twisted cruel logic. Snow clung to life and forced himself to earn it. When he died, he demanded strength and forced his Light to grow stronger. It was gradual progress, slow and ever so painful, but Snow saw his first victory when he died and was back before the Wizard had fully retracted her hand from whatever organ she had entangled it in.

He smiled, all blood and teeth and grim victory. The Wizard only laughed before tearing him apart again.

***

_Revenge is not a concept within the Logic. Vengeance is not real. Vengeance is weakness given shape, and the Logic does not accept weakness. Should you fail, you deserve Death, and the only way to regain life, honor, and your right to both is to become strong again. You are lower than those who defeat you, who lay you low, and you must show them your respect because of it. There is Hierarchy here, but one need not lay low forever. Even the lowliest Thrall can become a mighty Knight should he learn to gain strength and drink deeply from its wells. Oryx was defeated once. Do you know this? Do you remember this lesson?_ The Wizard tore at him until Snow was screaming that he remembered, till he was reciting the verse from the Books themselves. _Very good. Did Oryx seek revenge? No. Our King knows this Logic well, he instead sought strength. He sought the right to Live, and there is only one path to life._

“That path is death,” Snow whispered, slipping into its embrace once more. This vision was different. This vision was Truth.

_Snow saw the Hive, he saw the Vex and he saw the Cabal and even the Fallen. Last, he saw Humanity. The Fallen tore their arms off in reverence of strength, the Cabal led through power alone, the Vex sought to become so mighty that they were the Universe itself, and the Hive judged all who crossed them by the edge of their broken, shattered blades. Humanity had been crippled, hobbled by these four, but Humanity had something up their sleeve. They rose again, they grew fat from strength, and they clawed back to their feet. The Fallen were pushed back, twice, and given sweet death ever-after. The Vex sought might but Snow saw them fail to defend even their strongest fortress from the Guardians. Now only the Cabal and the Hive remained standing._

_A voice, deep and terrible, spoke. **Do you see the Logic now, Light-Slave? They all are ants, they are nothings, yet even they live and die by its Blade. The Sword Logic is in all, it is the very Truth of the Universe. The Vex seek to replace it, but they will always meet failure because they are weak. You think yourselves outside it, yet you meet out the judgement of this great Logic at every step.**_

_Snow wanted to turn, he could feel the voice there. It was so close, if he turned he would face it and know this being that now spoke to him._

**_You may have strength by my Hand. It is a Knife, and it is for you. Take it. Its shape is—_ **

Snow gasped back into life, feeling his skin, bones, and organs knit themselves back together. The Wizard had her back turned to him; she was leaving. Snow felt calm. There was no dread, no fear, no pain, no anger. Just calm understanding.

He looked down at the Hadium cuffs that shackled him so perfectly, and he _understood_. The Hive knew the truth of the Logic, and so they put it in everything. If what they made was stronger than you, it would never falter, it would never break. Hadium took on any aspect it was exposed to, and these cuffs were exposed to the Sword Logic. They would hold him so long as he was weaker than the cuffs, the Darkness and magic that ran through them. They had held him for so long, and now he knew why. _I was weak_ , he thought, _but no longer._

The cuffs simply fell off him, the Logic demanded that they submit to his power. The Logic was the Truth. The Logic was his.

Snow _blinked_ forward, his knife pulled from the pocket space his Ghost had stored it in. He kept himself from completing the strike, instead pulling the Wizard down to his level and holding her gently to him, blade pressed to the back of her skull.

“Thank you for your lessons,” he whispered, sliding his blade through her shields and deep into her bone without any resistance. “I have drunk deeply from strength, and now I know.”

Her body fell to the ground in a heap, and Snow regarded her with a calm disgust. She was weak. Worthless. Not worthy of life, not worthy of shape. He would take that from her.

Snow switched his knife into a forehand grip, hacking away at the Wizard’s body. He tore carapace from skin, muscle from bone, letting the blood and ichor flow over his armor and his naked face without a care. He paused only to carefully cut her robes away from her. His cloak was so tattered, he needed a new one. Hers would work nicely he decided.

He wrapped the new cloak around his neck and pulled up the hood, taking a breath and standing.

“She deserved worse,” his Ghost said quietly. He glanced at his companion, only nodding in agreement, listening to the sound of approaching footsteps. Heavy, full of sureness. A Knight. “Do you want your guns back?”

“No. I don’t need them. Not yet.” A knife would do just fine. This was after all the _Sword_ Logic, not the Bullet Logic. What better way to demonstrate his new path?

The Knight stopped when it spotted him, covered in the gore of the Wizard. There was a heavy moment of silence and stillness, the Knight caught between the urge to strike down Snow and the deepest feeling that this Guardian was a little too confident.

“I’m stronger than you,” Snow declared. “I judge you unfit to live.”

A single blink strike was all that was necessary, the Sword Logic singing deeply in his ears as Snow demonstrated his strength and fed off of the conquering of a second opponent. He picked up the Knight’s Sword, examining the dulled, chipped edge in a brand-new light. The chips and cracks were testaments to the wielder’s strength. A mighty blade that had destroyed so many, its blade was nearly broken because of its own strength. A deeply _Hive_ concept, but not necessarily the Logic’s.

_A chipped blade might show its strength from battles past,_ Snow thought, cutting through waves and waves of thrall and acolytes. _But that it chipped at all is a sign of weakness. The other blades were strong enough to crack the blade. The Knight was by far too weak. My blades will be tested, but they will never crack._

***

Snow stumbled out of the Hellmouth, the Knight’s Sword little more than a hilt at this point. The moon’s expanse was cold and quiet, and or the first time in what had probably been months, there was _quiet_. Sweet, blessed, quiet. How long had he sat in the dark, listening to the screams of the Hive? Their Darkness had been forced down his throat, he had tasted their rancid life and now he had escaped. Snow wondered if he felt relief.

His ghost floated beside him, brazenly out in the open. She had once been chatty, happy to exchange quips with him and laugh. Now they were both very quiet, and through sharing his pain, she too had been changed. She had been so very happy to watch him cut through the Hive and take their lives for his own. She had wanted the Wizard to suffer so much for what she had done, and he knew she was quietly angry that he had not dragged her death out longer. Not at him, but rather, for him.

“You need a name,” he decided. “I think we’ve earned a certain kind of genesis.”

Ghost swiveled towards him, her one pristine shell now coated in dust and blood—both his and the Hive’s. “What will you call me?”

Snow shrugged. “That’s on you. Your identity, your decision.” He hesitated. “You felt everything I felt. You didn’t have to, but you did. You deserve your own decisions outside of my influence.”

“I will _always_ be under your influence. You’re my Guardian. We can’t be separate, and I don’t want to.”

Snow smiled, genuinely, for the first time since he had entered that accursed pit. “Fine. I named myself after the first thing I saw when I walked out of the Cosmodrome. Why don’t you do something similar?”

“All I see is dust and dead things,” she replied flatly.

“Then what do you feel?” he prompted.

“…cold. It’s cold up here. And down there it’s… worse.”

“Everything we experience, we defeat and grow stronger from. That’s our way now,” Snow said.

There was a long beat of silence while his Ghost thought, but finally she spoke up. “Thandaa.”

He recognized the word. Urdu, a golden age language, one that she had been fascinated by shortly after he had first been rezzed. Snow had often scrounged around the Cryptarchy for old manuscripts full of it, and whenever they found a library, they scavenged the place for any hint of the long dead language.

“Cold and Snow. Kind of fitting, isn’t it?” he mused.

“Matching motifs are a necessity,” Thandaa huffed. “Besides. I think it’s pretty.”

“Your name literally means _chilly_ ,” he teased.

“And yours is the white fluffy stuff that falls on the ground.”

“Touché.”

***

Alex was the one who had caught Snow’s distress signal, and she had been the one to move out to it first. She suspected a trap (how could it not be?), but months of no contact from her fireteam partner meant that any sort of sign was one worth following. Besides, she had slain the Heart of the Black Garden. Not really a whole lot left to fear after you do something like that.

To her surprise, he was waiting for her on top of a crashed dropship on the lunar surface. His armor was beaten and broken beyond belief, his helmet looked like it was pieced together from scrapped fallen tech and pieces of Hive carapaces. His cloak resembled what the Hive Wizards liked to wear, and the only weapon she could see on him was his knife held closely in his hand. He was relaxed, completely at ease in the middle of the deadzone that was the lunar surface. What struck her the most however was his Light. Most Guardians carried it around them naturally, it emanated off of them so strongly it was impossible to miss. Snow however held his close, wrapped up tightly with perfect control; despite this Alex could feel it’s raw strength, and she was shocked to find that it was so much stronger than her own.

“Hey Alex,” he called out. “Been a while, huh?”

***

The following months were full of action for Snow. Alex tried to keep up with him, but he was so rarely in the Tower that it became increasingly difficult for her to so much as wave hello to him. He was frequently sent back to Luna (“He requested it, don’t look at me!” protested Cayde when questioned), and every day he brought back more intel than the rest of the Guardians stationed there. He had gained a far deeper understanding of the Hive in his months imprisoned there, and with it came a deadly efficiency in sneaking in, stealing information, and slaughtering everything on the way out.

The first time Alex saw her friend back in the Tower for any extended period of time, it was to talk to Eris Morn. The two of them spent hours discussing the Hive, and oddly, he seemed to enjoy her company. It was only natural, Alex supposed, that it was Snow who was assigned to Eris. He finally left Luna to eliminate the Hive elsewhere at her request, and when the time came, Alex was unsurprised to see him be responsible for assembling the fireteam to take Crota down. It was the first time she saw him excited about something since he had been taken to the Hellmouth by the Wizard.

“You’re really raring to go, aren’t you?” she asked after she accepted his invitation to come along.

Snow smiled. “Testing my blade against his has been a long time coming.”

“Didn’t know you had a personal grudge against Crota.”

“I don’t. But the Logic demands it. He beat us on the moon, we have to prove our strength now.”

***

Snow did not expect the fight to be easy. Crota had been a part of the Logic so much longer than he had been, but both the Prince and the Hunter could feel it demand their clash. When the sword fell, there was no question over who should pick it up.

Snow flipped the now-familiar weight of the Hive weapon around his hand, charging forward as Crota knelt from an onslaught of rockets. The Prince raised his head to Snow as he approached, and with a grim smile the Hunter told him one last thing before he cleaved the ancient Prince to nothing: “I bring the Logic’s judgement.”

***

“Oryx will come,” Eris said softly. A year had passed, Alex had put down Skolas and Snow was fresh from a run on the Prison of Elders. “He must prove himself before you, now that you have slain his own brood.”

“Two of them,” Snow reminded her. “I was the one who removed Urrux’s head in the Prison.”

“A scion is not a son,” Eris reminded him. Snow simply shrugged.

“If Oryx wants vengeance, he can come and try for it. This fight was bound to happen eventually. The Logic demands it.”

“Vengeance is only a portion of it. Oryx will be here because he serves the Sword Logic. You have to face him because you wield the Sword Logic, and you’re the only one that understands it like I do,” Eris said. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he despises you for the way you dirty its sanctity.”

“The Sword Logic is written in blood by a pen of bone. Fuck its sanctity,” Snow scoffed. “It’s a power, and one we need. I’ll use it to tear down the Hive King if I have to.”

In the back of his mind, Snow felt Oryx’s presence. _I still have a Knife for you. Would you know it’s shape?_

_The Knife is mine, God-King_. Snow responded. _I will not accept your gift. I’ll rip it from your corpse._

And in time, he did.

**Author's Note:**

> Oh we're not done putting this one through hell just yet. Come yell at me on tumblr! arrogance-is-my-middlename.tumblr.com


End file.
